Drake // The Hopeless Emptiness

A hard drive clearout unearthed a piece i wrote about everyone’s favourite weirdo popstar super-creep, drake. assembled in the midnight hours shortly after If You’re Reading This… was released, it kind of got away from me a bit and never quite made it as far as its intended publisher…

‘I need some company, I need some company, I need to take my mind off being me in my prime’: Drizzy Drake and the bewildering twilight of his millennial generation…

It’s Halloween of 2011 and I’m at some party. I’m in my final year of university, and had to be dragged there – my preferred way to spend the evening around that time was to freak out about not applying for internships, whilst streaming American sitcoms and not applying for internships. It’s late when I get to the party. I know maybe one friend there, who spends the evening preoccupied with her on-off boyfriend. I’m just about the only one not in costume. Somehow ‘late’ becomes 3am and I’m stumbling; the room is swaying and a rapper, half Jewish-Canadian, half African-American is intoning relentless mixed metaphors and half-realised insights into his relationships with women; with the world in general. It’s 3am and everyone is stumbling, enraptured with fists in the air: chanting along to the first ‘proper’ album by Drake. “I’m Doing Me, I’m Doing Me right now,” and it’s all fed through two or three layers of vocals and vocoder effects and gold-tipped wires and machines made in Japan in a studio in Toronto; West Hollywood; Jamaica. Finally here, recreated on cheap components in a rented house that shakes with every badly over-exposed bass note, sending everybody crazy with that weird, prescient mantra. I’m Doing Me, I’m Doing Me right now…